Google Threw A Punch, Microsoft Fires Back With A Missile — Earlier today, Google came out swinging. Seemingly sick of being continuously slapped in the face by the patent issue, Google's SVP and Chief Legal Officer, David Drummond, wrote a blog post calling out several of Google's rivals …

New in Labs: Preview Pane — When I check my email, I often rely on the message snippets to figure out which messages to open first. Sometimes, though, I want to see more than snippets, which is why I'm happy to announce that you can now preview messages in your inbox using a new feature in Gmail Labs called Preview Pane.

Mall Maps and Map Search come to Bing for Mobile — Today, we're happy to announce that we have added mall maps and map search to Bing for Mobile Browse. You may recall that we initially announced mall maps for the desktop last December. Since then we've been listening to your feedback …

Apple's Inductive Charging Patent Finally Surfaces — On August 4, 2011, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals two specific concepts of an “Inductive Charging System” for use with iOS devices. The first concept involves an oddly designed charging tower.

We call it Grouptiva (Groupon Acquires Obtiva) — Today, Groupon is announcing that it is acquiring Obtiva (www.obtiva.com) the largest Ruby on Rails software development firm in Chicago. — We've been working side-by-side with our Obtiva colleagues since way back in 2009, when Groupon had a handful of engineers.

“Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power — Everyone's abuzz with the “nymwars,” mostly in response to Google Plus' decision to enforce its “real names” policy. At first, Google Plus went on a deleting spree, killing off accounts that violated its policy.

Security researchers hack Google's Chrome OS — When Google first started talking about its Google Chrome OS software a few years ago, one of the selling points was the promise that it would come with much better built-in security than other operating systems.

Official KISSmetrics Response to Data Collection Practices — I'm Hiten Shah, the CEO of KISSmetrics. First of all, I'd like to thank you for being part of the KISSmetrics community and allowing us to help you make better decisions for your online business. That's a responsibility that I take very seriously.

6,000,000,000 — The beautiful Montbretia flower photo shown here is our 6 billionth photo! It was uploaded Monday by eon60. — Over the last 5 years uploads have been increasing 20% year-over-year and we love hitting a milestone like this. It's the ability to wander through the titles …

Apple No. 1 in worldwide smartphone shipments — Market research firm IDC on Thursday released its worldwide smartphone market numbers for the second quarter of 2011 and Apple is in the lead. — “The smartphone market crowned a new leader in 2Q11, and its name is Apple,” said Ramon Llamas …

Nokia N9 countdown page goes live, 49 days to launch? — Google's powers of awkward PR translation may have been right on the MeeGo-money, judging by this coutdown page for the N9. The Swedish site, which just went live today, has begun its 49 days and counting creep to the Gorrila Glass-clad handset's eventual overseas debut.

Twitter to open source Hadoop-like tool — Attention webscale aficionados, Twitter says it is planning to open source Storm, its Hadoop-like real-time data processing tool. In a blog post Thursday, the microblogging network said it plans to release the Storm code on Sept. 19 at the Strange Loop event in St. Louis, Mo.